Song of Blades & HeroesPosted by mappe Thu, March 18, 2010 21:05:06I've been ill with a cold for the last week or so, hence the complete and utter lack of updates on my Song of Blades game more than a week ago. Now I'm recovering though and tomorrow I'm heading back to work. This will be celebrated by a report of my less than stellar performance in...

Pyramid Campaign - Scenario 3Miss Catherine and her band of warriors have now acquired the old talisman they need to access the riches hidden in the pyramid of Sankar. They reach their final destination at dawn, and with their blades at the ready emerge into the clearing in which the pyramid is located. Automated metal guardians stir to life as ancient seals of warding are broken by the talisman's presence.

Scenario specific rules: The pyramid is located in the centre of the battle field. The defender (that's me, playing the guardians of Sankar's pyramid) deploys his forces either in base contact with the pyramid or on the first level of the pyramid's steps. The attacker then assigns the values 2,3,4 and 5 to each table edge and rolls a D6 to determine which side he's deploying on: 1; Defender's choice, 2-5; the assigned side, 6; Attacker's choice.As you can see above, Fredrik deployed miss Catherine and her trusty companions on the "western" edge, while my automaton guardians are spread around the pyramid.

The goal of the attacker is to reach the top tier of the pyramid with
the talisman bearer (assigned pre-game) and spend 3 actions in one turn
with that character to activate the powers of the talisman. The
objective of the defenders is simply to stop the attackers from
reaching their win condition.

I started with initiative, and managed to move my guys around a bit before failing two activations. As always, click the image below for a larger version.Fredrik's first turn was a bit more eventful, as he managed to move forward and Blink took a shot at my Magic-user which actually got him to fall.Turn two was very inactive for both. I moved one of my sneaks, and then when I actived my
magic user with two dice to stand him up I failed both! Fredrik was
even worse off though, and failed with two on his first activation
(Creed, the berserker).I then had a pretty decent turn, as I activated all of my characters. I tried positioning defensively around the first tier on the pyramid as that would give my guys some bonus. I put the hammerers (tough but slow) as some sort of bait on the ground.Fredrik's troops were not late to go for the hammerers. First his magic user Summer attempted to transfix my Golem, which failed as I passed the two-dice Quality test. Blink missed an aimed shot at the nearest hammerer and then Tora and Creed moved up on it, failing to cause any damage though.

I started my next turn with a successful transfix of Creed. With a golden opportunity, my fighter failed to activate and the turn passed to Fredrik. Fredrik broke the transfix on Creed and went on to take out my hammerer but failed to do much else.I tried to respond in force. My golem moved down from the ledge and attacked Tora, the dwarf warrior. She was merely pushed back though. My magic-user attempted to transfix Creed, which also failed. My other characters moved about a little, and then I did the mistake which would cost me the game. My champion moved forward and attacked Creed, but failed and was pushed back. One of my sneaks tried to squeeze in and attacked Creed too, but failed and fell!Creed smashed the sneak to smithereens with a powerful attack, and Summer transfixed my champion. Tora rushed forward and aimed a powerful attack at my champion, but I lucked out and we rolled a draw! Blink took an aimed shot at my fighter, but missed. Catherine and Ana-Marie had not been participating in the battle so far, but now Catherine moved up while Ana-Marie stayed at the edge of a woods section (not in the image).My champion managed to break the transfix spell, and boosted by this I decided to gamble on my golem. I activated with three dice and all succeeded! He dashed forward, and attacked Fredrik's leader Catherine with a powerful attack... which resulted in a push-back of Catherine! =( My magic-user then attempted to transfix Catherine, but failed to activate.Summer started Fredrik's sixth turn by transfixing my champion. Tora, who was in base contact already did a powerful attack but once again I lucked out and rolled a draw! I was all out of luck though, as Creed circled around and with the assistance of Tora managed to kill my champion. All 5 of my remaining models failed their morale tests with at least one dice, and none of them could flee towards the nearest table edge without passing any enemies within a short distance. They were all wiped out and Catherine's gang could without suffering a single casualty pillage the treasury of the pyramid!I was pretty let down by this abrupt end, and so was Fredrik. I did make a misstake when I moved my champion to the front-lines, I admit that. We still don't think the ending was fair - or more importantly; it wasn't fun! The main problem here was the way my remaining models were forced to flee into the arms of the enemies.

In conclusion, a neat little campaign - with a surprisingly abrupt ending. A pity that, especially as I had built the pyramid especially for this scenario and painted a few D&D Warforged for the occasion!

Coming up; I'll post a short tutorial on how I did the pyramid. Also, a close-up on the painted Automatons!